A Michigan high school student has filed a federal lawsuit, possibly a class action suit if certified by the court, against Amazon.com for erasing copies of two classic George Orwell books, 1984 and Animal Farm, from the Kindle readers of customers who had previously purchased digital copies of those books.

Kindle is the name of an Amazon-produced e-text reader that allows customers to purchase and download digital copies of books and magazines from the Amazon website. But after purchasing copies of those books, many customers had those downloads deleted along with any notes they may have made about them. The complaint alleges:

With an uncanny knack for irony, Amazon recently remotely deleted any traces of certain electronic copies of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” from customers’ Kindles and iPhones, thereby sending these books down Orwell’s so-called “memory hole.”

Amazon says that they deleted the books after discovering that they had been added to their online catalog and made available for download by a company that did not own the right to sell the books. But rather than merely deleting the files from their own system and preventing new customers from buying them, the company chose to delete the files out of the individual Kindles of customers who had already purchased them:

On or about July 16 and 17, 2009, Amazon withdrew from sale certain e-books, including George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm.” Amazon then remotely deleted these e-books from purchasers’ Kindles and iPhones. In doing so, Amazon not only deleted the e-books, but also rendered useless any electronic notes and annotations that consumers had made within these e-books because the notes were no longer tied to the referenced or highlighted text. Amazon then refunded the purchase price to these consumers.

The complaint cites a New York Times technology writer saying that Amazon’s actions are “like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.”

Gawronski and his co-plaintiff, Antoine Bruguier of California, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington because that is where Amazon’s headquarters are located. The suit alleges that Amazon violated their own license agreement, which provides that once a purchase is completed the customer has “non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times.”

The complaint says that Gawronski purchased 1984 because it was a summer homework assignment from a high school teacher. After taking “copious notes” in preparation for writing a report about the book, he literally watched it disappear from his Kindle a couple weeks ago when he powered on the device. Though the notes are still there, the complaint says they have been rendered useless:

After Amazon remotely deleted “1984,” those notes were rendered useless because they no longer referenced the relevant parts of the book. The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless if it does not actually a reference a specific paragraph. By deleting “1984” from Mr. Gawronski’s Kindle 2, this is the position in which Amazon left him. Mr. Gawronski now needs to recreate all of his studies.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos issued a public apology for the company’s actions, saying, “Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”

The lawsuit seeks to establish class-action status on behalf of all Kindle users who have had books deleted by Amazon in the past. The plaintiffs allege that Amazon’s actions violate 18 U.S.C. § 1030, a law prohibiting “fraud and related activity in connection with computers.”

This law prohibits any action that “knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer” or “intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage.” A copy of the complaint is below.

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